


Human Remains

by rainer76



Category: Fringe
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Red 'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:10:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A photograph is the leftovers of where you've been, hinting at where you're headed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Remains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monanotlisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/gifts).



There’s a picture of Captain Lee taken when he was sixteen, body coltish, hair plastered to his forehead.  There are braces on his teeth.

Olivia sees the photograph at the Senator’s house on a lazy afternoon, whitewashed walls surrounded by an impeccable garden that stretched for how many miles. It was perfect. Her first distinct thought was _no fucking way_ , followed by giddiness.

It was tradition, expected, for teammates to find the most damning photograph of their colleagues and parade it around for public ridicule. Liv’s nursing a Long Island tea and contemplating theft of property – if it’s possible to escape the Senator’s house with a bulky frame stuffed under her shirt, or if security would jump her for stealing the ‘silverware.’

Lincoln looks uncomfortable, spine straight, expression solemn. It’s the type of stance one associates with sepia photographs from the nineteenth century.

Olivia wants to reach into the past and muss his hair, rumple Lincoln’s clothing until the stiff planes of his body turn into parabolic curves. In the picture Nick Lane has one arm thrown over Lee's shoulders, his grin wide, manic. Both boys are dressed in their prep-school uniform, Field Sciences, the first class.

The Boy Scouts, Charlie once teased.

Charlie came to Fringe out of the ranks of the disbanded FBI.  Liv got her marching orders (written in triplicate) from the military, curiously, her sponsorship into Fringe unknown.  Olivia’s one attempt to find out who recommended her had fallen short of a definitive answer.  “Someone up high likes you,” Broyles had rumbled, his tone implying leave-it-be. 

In direct contrast to Olivia and Charlie, Lincoln’s the one member of their unit who’d been groomed for Fringe his entire life.  He’s been in the thick of it almost as long as Charlie.  Lee finished his university degree part-time on the weekends with ‘practical experience in the job’ filling half the quota of his overall grade.

At sixteen, Lincoln's face is rounder; softer at the edges, beside him Nick is nothing but sharp angles.  Olivia finds herself staring, tracing the negative light of a solemn boy with glasses, neat hairstyle and a prim uniform. She can’t reconcile the image with _her_ Lincoln, as if she’s seeing some alternate version of who he might have been.

“I’m a good cook,” Lincoln had said to Olivia on her second day on the job. “I do wonders with a tin of bully-beef and a can of tomatoes.”

“Fine dining.”

“I spare no expense. Consider it a prelude to our first date, which I estimate to be three years, depending on Frank.”

She checked the air canister on her belt and stood up, body stooped in the confines of the van.

“You have a set formula for your mathematics, Lothario?”

“Entire schematics devoted to the subject.” He smiled at her, bright and undeterred. “They say women love a confident man.”

Liv shot him a sideways glance, amused. “ _They_? Your second-hand information is correct…and a little alarming.”

Lincoln pulled a face and checked his weapon casually, sliding it into the thigh holster with a kiss of metal against synthetic webbing.

“It’s not ‘second-hand’ information, I’ll have you know. I’m vastly experienced.”

The t-shirt was worn in, soft from repeated washes.  The cargo pants were a loose fit on his hips, the black webbing of his holster stark against the khaki.  Olivia felt as if her eyes were drawn to his upper thigh, the cut of his groin emphasized, framed for her amusement.

Olivia glanced out the window of the van.

The Washington Monument cast a middle finger in the distance, a stark exclamation mark, or as Olivia privately thought of it ‘a national fuck you’.

“Most women like a confident man, up until they decide it’s arrogance instead.”

“I’m not arrogant.” He hadn’t looked goofy in that moment. Lincoln looked as solemn as his sixteen-year-old self, honest where everyone else was shaded grey. His gaze had tracked across her face, left to right.  “I just know some things are worth waiting for.”

Olivia kicked Charlie in the ankle to startle him awake. “If you can stretch the can of bully-beef into a three-way meal, I’ll consider it.”

There are braces on Lincoln’s teeth in the photograph. He looks pinched, too cognizant of the job he’ll be posted in, only a few short years in the future. Of the graduating class in Field Sciences, 2000, Olivia knows only a handful are left.

She pulled Lincoln’s ass out of a Class Four Event on her first day on the job. He kissed her in the aftermath, pulse hectic under her thumb, and attended Nick’s funeral two days later.

Olivia compares the two boys side by side - Nick’s wide smile, his bared teeth, dilated eyes – a fun-house mirror of laughter sliding into terror. Beside him, Lincoln looks the epitome of a geek: a far cry from the casual lope and scruffy exterior of today’s appearance. He looks sixteen and scared, body rigid.

Olivia still has the urge to steal the evidence, but not to display it for public ridicule. She wants to cover the vulnerability, keep it safe, guarded.

She wonders what Lincoln might have been like if he hadn't learnt to cover his exterior.  If, in the years before they met, Lincoln spent his nights sleepless, building a carapace over his concerns, all of his outward fears no longer visible, or touchable.

Olivia sets her fingers against the cool glass, against the image of a sixteen-year-old boy, and smudges downward, drawing a line from throat to heart.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for monanotlisa, as a stop-gap filler, until bigger and better things arrive. Title from Tom McRae, who's refrain 'It's not enough', sums up my feelings for Fringe (and its TV scheduling this year) perfectly.


End file.
